Silas mentioned an issue with our speed when we were back on the road. “Looks like you’re going about ten under.” He pointed at the dashboard and I forced myself to push down harder on the pedal so that we accelerated. “Next time, I’ll be able to drive.” I had bargained with another attorney (I was handling the closing for her mother-in-law’s house purchase) and she was helping him to restore his license—she thought it would happen, but timing it was difficult.
“That will be nice,” I said. He had assumed that there would be a “next time,” and I hoped that he was correct.
“You could always fly home, right? Into Nashville?”
“That’s in Tennessee,” Lyra said, because she’d been studying maps.
“I don’t like flying,” I confessed. “I had to do it for softball games in college and I barely forced myself into the seat.” I glanced into the back and realized that I could have been passing along those fears, which she didn’t need. “There’s no good reason for me to feel that way,” I stated next. “Airplanes are perfectly safe.”
But we were driving right now and even with me pushing harder on the accelerator, we had a long way to go because the phone was a big, fat fibber. We made a few more stops and at one of them, Silas took my chin in his hand. “There are more thanthree hours to go and you look like you already hit the wall. I can take over.”
“No, you can’t,” I said, and he understood why but he didn’t like it. But when I was back behind the wheel, he pushed away my fingers from where I was trying to rub my stiff neck and did it for me, and it felt so good…it was so nice to be touched, which sounded weird but I’d felt the same way when we’d danced at the wedding. Just to be in someone’s arms was amazing—anyone’s arms would have been great, I had told myself that night after we’d gotten home.
And if I was able to think that way, then was I ready to date again? Maybe? The thought filled me with more dread than anticipation, but I wasn’t going to reach my goals and achieve the things that I had always wanted without getting back out there and meeting someone new.
I decided now that I would start a search for love—or at least for companionship—once we returned to Detroit. But in the meantime, there were a lot of miles to drive through Kentucky. Silas suggested that maybe Lyra should stop reading aloud because it might make people sleepy, and that was certainly the effect it had on me. Instead, they sang a lot of songs from various animated movies that they had watched together and I joined in when I knew the lyrics. I recited the times tables as high as I could go (multiples of seventeen). We all managed to stay awake.
“I don’t think you should do this trip alone again,” Silas told me.
“I always have,” I said. Dax never wanted to go and honestly, he hadn’t been welcome. “My parents aren’t able to drive so far anymore and they’re not flyers, either. They used to make big trips to watch me play, but then my dad had a stroke.” I looked in the mirror at Lyra, who was (as always) listening closely. “He has trouble speaking,” I explained. “When he eats, sometimes it gets messy, too. And he can’t walk very far or very fast.”
“What’s a stroke?” she asked, so I started there and explained what had happened to my poor dad, all the way until we got to my parents’ house. I didn’t want to scare her but she needed to know so that she wouldn’t be surprised. I also didn’t want her to embarrass him in some way, although my father wasn’t thin-skinned. He’d always had a very high tolerance for kids and their questions, too.
They were both waiting on their porch when we pulled into the driveway and I got out so fast that I forgot to turn off the car. I ran to meet them.
“Honey, don’t cry,” my mom told me, but she was, too, and my dad’s eyes were also misty. Silas and Lyra hung back until I waved at them to come and join us. My parents were clearly thrilled to have a little girl over to visit, giving me a glimpse of how happy they would have been to have a grandchild of their own…
Anyway, we all went inside where my mom had prepared a huge dinner, although I’d told her that she really didn’t have to. Despite all the snacks I’d eaten in the car to keep myself going, I was hungry and Silas always was. Just in case (since I’d known that I couldn’t stop her from cooking), I’d also let her know thatone of us was a picky eater. There were several plain foods on the table but to my surprise, I saw Lyra accept helpings of things that I never thought I’d see on her plate…she was trying hushpuppies? Silas had never eaten them either, but my mom’s were excellent and so was everything else she’d made. I stuffed myself with a whole lot of comfort food but we all talked as we ate, too.
They were curious about him, but they were mostly interested in Lyra, and as they spoke to her? It was like I could see her bloom. She was so excited by my parents’ attention and by their praise. “I didn’t know a girl your age could write a book,” my mom told her admiringly, and she was genuinely happy when Lyra promised to let her read it. They were thrilled to hear that she liked softball and we had to promise to do a demo the next day. Lyra didn’t seem to notice when my dad had trouble with his fork or when a little of the water he drank spilled back out of his mouth.
Silas got attention, too, but it wasn’t quite as positive. They were guarded in how they spoke to him, but he didn’t cuss and he didn’t say anything that immediately turned them off, like when they’d first encountered Dax. My ex had announced that he’d never met any girl’s parents before and he wasn’t going to do it again.
“You mean that you won’t meet the next girl’s parents?” my dad had asked, and I’d had to assure them that Dax hadn’t meant that he was planning to break up with me. But the alternative meaning of his statement was that he didn’t plan to see my parents ever again—so neither option was good.
Silas avoided any pitfalls like that. He was polite at all times but also honest, like when he talked about his job history—it was long and varied, and it included stuff that my parents raised their eyebrows at. “He has a lot of ideas for his future and I know he can accomplish them,” I broke in, and I smiled at him encouragingly.
“I’ll need to get some more education accomplished first,” he answered.
“Well now, I left high school after eleventh grade myself,” my dad said. “I had to help out the family. I managed to make a good life, but it wasn’t the easiest. I’m glad we have our girl to help us now.” He patted my hand. “She figured out all our finances.”
“I help you just like you did for me,” I told him. “We’re there for each other.” I glanced at Silas, who nodded.
This was a smaller house than the one where we lived in Detroit, and after dinner, my parents and I ganged up on him and Lyra to force them into my childhood bedroom. “You can’t fit on the couch,” I said, and I was also aware that Lyra didn’t want to share a room with me. My former bed was a tight (and short) fit for Silas, though. I wasn’t surprised when I heard him get up a few hours later and he came to join me at the kitchen table, where I was working.
“You have a lot more to do?” he asked, but I shook my head.
“Just a few things and then the couch is calling.” I yawned. “Maybe you’re right about trying to fly. That drive was rough.”
“You’re so nervous on the road,” he pointed out. “Does your neck still hurt?”
It did, and I’d been rubbing it intermittently as I looked at my laptop. “It’s ok.”
“Is that why you haven’t visited here? Because of the drive? You always talk to your parents on the phone, but I figured there had to be some kind of problem between you and that was why you didn’t see them.”
“There’s no problem.” I fiddled with my pencil. “They’re really busy, which you might not have suspected, but it’s true. They’re always doing things with their church and taking bus tours. We had to schedule this visit weeks ago.”
“Yeah, but I can see how they feel about you,” he said, shaking his head. “They would have dropped everything if you’d told them that you were coming.”
